


Haf

by therealdocmountfitchett



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 08:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10330580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therealdocmountfitchett/pseuds/therealdocmountfitchett
Summary: 1975. Patsy and Delia return to Wales for Mrs Busby's funeral.//unbeta-ed and written in one sitting, so please feel free to point out any glaring mistakes :)//





	

**Author's Note:**

> In my headcanon, the Bubsies grow to accept Patsy in the thirteen years that've passed since present on Call the Midwife. This is a one-shot at the moment, but I may carry it on if I can think of a second chapter worth writing up.

Patsy drives.  
That’s unusual in itself. Whenever they go somewhere together in the car, there is an instinctive order to things; Delia always climbs unthinkingly into the driver’s seat, and Patsy is always on the passenger side. Today, Patsy drives.  
It’s summertime. High noon has just passed; as they drive west, the sun hangs in the sky like a gigantic glass marble straight over the roof of the car, bright enough that it hurts to look at. Its light is so bright, the sky behind seems darker than blue. It’s a shade of indigo, streaked across with fibrous clouds at the horizon. The day is skin-reddeningly hot. Patsy thinks she’s scarcely felt it this hot since they went to Italy two Augusts ago. In the humidity, with the sky that indigo colour reminiscent of electric and the sounds of crickets and bees in the hedges, there’s a strange, sleepy vitality to it all.  
They’ve just passed Haverfordwest. Haverfordwest has become a marker to Delia over the years, a final milestone that means they are less than twenty minutes from home.  
Or, what used to be home. Her long teenage years haven’t ever stopped feeling recent. It’s almost a shock sometimes, to remember she is a grown woman pushing forty years of age. There was some part of Mam, too, that never grew out of seeing her as forever at ten or thirteen or sixteen, preserved with the fresh girlishness she’d left behind quite unknowingly somewhere along the way. There was some part of Mam that never grew out of seeing her as a child. Delia turns her head away, looking sidelong out of the passenger side window, because her eyes are filling.  
The car windows are rolled down. Patsy’s smoking out of the driver’s side, and the sleeves of her blouse are hiked up past the elbows. She wears muted colours and jeans; bright ones don’t feel appropriate before the funeral.  
Delia let the dark dye wash out of her hair years ago. It’s dirty blonde again these days, though admittedly greying at the roots. She doesn’t mind so much. Patsy likes it.  
They always have the radio on in the car. That’s something that doesn’t change. It’s playing Please Mr Postman. Now, there’s a song that goes back some years. Trixie had that on vinyl when it first came out. The Marvelettes, was it? Or maybe the Shirelles. Trixie, bless her, used to make them dance around the bedroom at Nonnatus House to it in their pyjamas when all the nuns were at compline. Patsy can’t suppress a small smile at the memory. The Beatles did it next. This one was… the Carpenters?  
They’re in the depths of the Welsh countryside now. Haverfordwest is behind them. There is only their car and a narrow lane of greenery and white cow parsley. Delia’s village lies at the end of this back road, perching nearly on top of a cliff iced with farmland. From her parents’ house, one can hear the distant swash and thunder of the sea on clear nights. The first time she brought Patsy down here about six years ago, Dad promptly handed the latter a pair of Delia’s old boots and took them for a coastal path walk (which Delia herself had done a hundred times) to show off the best of Pembrokeshire. She likes to think of Dad and Patsy as kindred spirits, in a way. Whenever they come down in the summer or at Christmas, Dad and Pasty can talk at one another for hours about anything, and several times before, Delia had found herself in a corner chair watching them with bemusement and wondering if they’d notice if she got up and went back to London by herself.  
She does not feel sad. It does not feel as though Mam is dead. The words 'Mam is dead', yes, they are there, comprehended. But Mam doesn’t feel gone yet. She doubts Mam will ever be dead. She's been crying a lot lately because the words are real; the feeling isn’t. Delia looks up, out of the windshield at the winding lane growing closer to home, and they’re going back to Wales exactly as they do every summer to see her parents. Like every summer, she is reminded of those husky, never-ending summers before she grew up, dreaming and pining for her life to start. The warm season goes by faster now that she savours it more. Summer always has been her favourite season.  
Mam will not be at the other end. She knows that.  
It doesn’t feel as though Mam is dead. That they have come to help Dad organise the funeral.  
It doesn’t feel real until they reach the village. Patsy parks on the pavement on the quiet High Street, almost deserted; it’s not the summer holidays for another week, so the kids are still at school. It’s a Tuesday, too, so everybody is at work and the housewives and retirees who aren’t are most likely at home, prudently avoiding the shadeless heat on the High Street. Several of the shops have shut for the afternoon. The two of them have parked just down the road from Busby and Sons Draper. Dad sits on the little sill outside the shop window in his shirtsleeves, white hair combed and black glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, smoking his pipe, waiting for them, solitary. Delia barely registers that they have arrived until the engine stops. Then it is real.  
Patsy looks at her.  
“Ready?”  
She nods numbly.  
Both of them get out of the car. There’s nobody around except Dad. Delia stops all of a sudden, swallowing hard, and she can’t walk further towards him.  
Patsy’s hand curls into hers, and her eyes are very blue in this light. “Delia?” she questions, soft, kind.  
That makes Delia well with tears again. She attempts a smile, and half-cries, swallowing back more sobs. Despite the heat, Patsy gathers her close, and they melt into a conjoined shape. Delia cries onto Patsy’s shoulder; her skin is hot and her neck smells like the Chanel perfume clinging to it. Long strands of strawberry blonde hair tickle the top of Delia’s head. They might’ve been there more than a minute. Maybe less. Eventually, she sniffs and looks up at the taller woman, apologetic.  
“Sorry, Pats”.  
Patsy merely runs a gentle thumb along her cheek, and leans down to press a kiss on the other’s lips. “It’s alright,” she murmurs. “It’s alright”.  
And their hands fold back into each other’s. A single black shadow falls across the tarmac road as they walk to meet Dad.

**Author's Note:**

> @angeldefright is my tumblr if anyone wants to make friends :))


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